


Mirrors

by Orlha



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hatake Kakashi-centric, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, tags are not complete due to plot reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22223569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orlha/pseuds/Orlha
Summary: Returning to life after war is never easy and despite how Kakashi tries, there's always that sense of unease and some things are just harder to let go than others.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi, Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 13
Kudos: 153





	1. Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> **Word of caution: The tag on this fic is "Choose not to use archive warnings"**

“I’m leaving,” Sasuke says to him.

Kakashi knows there aren’t any words he could say to stop Sasuke from leaving. Sasuke hadn’t really formed any ties in Konoha aside from Team Seven even in the short six months he was forced to stay after the war. Konoha was just a bad memory for Sasuke and Kakashi could empathise with that. So he grips Sasuke’s arm, the way Uchihas used to do to say goodbye to their warriors. 

“Good bye,” Kakashi says. Sakura’s cold fingers are curled in his hands, feeling like a weight, a relief as another of team seven leaves.

Kakashi watches as Sasuke turns and walks through the gates. He hears the rustle of the leaves when the wind rushes past them, the soft crunch of Naruto footsteps as he leaps off the branch. 

He’s too far to hear their words. Kakashi doesn’t care either way. Sasuke had left last time, he’s leaving again this time and it doesn’t surprise Kakashi.

“I’m surprised you didn’t try to stop him,” he murmurs to Sakura and she only looks at him with a smile. 

That she didn’t try to go with him.

“Did you need to ask?” 

He chuckles lowly. They might have had a relationship somewhat towards the end of the war, but Sasuke had been her long-time crush. Perhaps he was a little insecure. People had never chosen him over someone else.

“Just the two of us now, huh,” he says. There’s a clenching in his chest, even as he watched Sasuke’s fading back. 

“Just the two of us…” Kakashi tucks his hands deep into his pockets, not willing to give into the sorrow welling at the back of his throat. 

“Hey,” Naruto greets, his footsteps heavier than normal, dark circles rim his eyes. 

It’s the dreams that never stop, Kakashi thinks. No matter how heroic a war is, whether it’s to stop a country or an army of clones from destroying the world, the war always takes its toll. Kakashi knows it all too well. His own eyes are dark and rimmed, and he lies in bed waiting for the sleep that never comes.

“Don’t stay here too long,” Naruto says. “I would ask you to join me for dinner, but Hinata’s introducing me to her parents, ya know?” A ghost of the smile lingers on his lips before he squares his shoulders and claps Kakashi on his biceps.

“Have to try my best, ya know?”

“You’re a good kid,” Kakashi says, ruffling his hair.

“I’m already _twenty,_ Sensei.” 

The war had cost them four years. They had been still relatively wide-eyed and naive before it started. 

“Still a kid.” Kakashi waves his fingers at Naruto. “Good luck~” he says before flickering back to his apartment.

“You’re late!” Sakura pouted, not even bothering to get up from her seat at his dining table.

“Maa, maa.” 

He snags into the seat opposite her, tugging his mask down with a heave of relief and she smiles, lacing her hands through his. 

“We should get dinner,” she says. “You shouldn’t forget to eat.”

He traces her features with his eyes. Her pale pink eyelashes framing those angled green eyes he could never stop staring into. 

“It’s probably just the two of us eating,” he says. “It’s troublesome cooking for only two.”

“With how Sai is busy with Lee and his painting business and Yamato-taichou and his carpentry. I’m not surprised.” She laughs and shakes her head. “The world is leaving behind you, _Sensei.”_

“What _Sensei?_ ” He pokes her on the forehead. “You’ve been a jounin for over three years. Plus, I did only teach you for six months.”

He takes a sip out of her teacup and makes a face at how cold it is. “No to mention, my girlfriend calling me Sensei makes me feel so lecherous.”

“Almost something out of an Icha Icha, eh?”

Kakashi turned to look out of the window. It’s spring now, the sakura blossoms are in full bloom now. He remembers the war starting in winter, the cold months spent huddling heat.

Sakura had been sent a whole year leading the medical division. The youngest ever, the most capable one next to Tsunade. He hadn’t gotten to see her two years later. Not until she had been eighteen to his thirty years. 

It almost feels like a dream now.

The peace after the war, the strange silence from all the other countries. He doesn't need to wake up and hack through an army of clones again, worry when he doesn't see Sakura for days.

A relationship born from shared trauma never lasts, yet here he is. Or is he? Kakashi closes his eyes, forcing down the growing heat from his eyes. 

“Food, Kakashi.” She taps his fingers. “Don’t try to change the subject.”

“Eh… I’m not really hungry…” He hadn’t had much of an appetite since he returned from the war. He should be happy. They had gotten through the war, hadn’t they?

All alive and safe.

Kakashi takes a shuddering breath, forcing himself to take slow and steady breath.

He’s okay, he tells himself over and over again.

“I guess only if it’s broiled mackerel,” Kakashi finally says and forces himself to get up and prepare the fish. 

“You and your mackerel,” she sighs. 

“Don’t be like that.” Kakashi laughs. “I know you love me.”

Sakura smiles at him, the kind of smile that always made him feel like he’s being blinded. 

“ _Always.”_


	2. Light

Kakashi didn’t want to be the Hokage. He had been tired after the war, some days too exhausted to even get up. There were plenty of better candidates than him, he had insisted, but Tsunade was too tired to wait for Naruto to take the hat and there were none as well-respected as he was.

Kakashi couldn’t blame her for the way things went during the war. 

It had been all sorts of fuckery. Raising their dead and forcing them to kill them. At least he had Sakura with him. Curling up with Sakura in his arms had been his anchor through the mess. Sakura wanted a wall of plants when they got their own apartment. Plants made people feel better, she said. 

It had been the first thing Kakashi had done when he got home was to get a wall of flowers and ivy. It had been what Sakura wanted. On the nights that he can’t sleep, he would stare at them, reciting their names. He knows their names and meanings all by heart.

He stamps the paperwork aggressively, barely reading the hospital budget reports. 

“So as I was saying,” she says as she repeats herself for the third time, shifting to lean on her left leg. “ _Kakashi!_ Are you listening to me?” She slams her hands on his table. 

“Yes, yes. You’re changing the new hospital policy and because of the change of the hospital policy, also with the uptick of mental health exams failing, the crotchety old woman has been blocking your policies from effectively working. They’re all in the report, I read the reports, Sakura-chan.” He presses his fingers on his nose bridge and wonders if bringing plants into his office would help him feel better too.

He didn’t think the plants helped. Deep down he knew nothing would help with the gaping emptiness in his chest. The nightmares never stop, even with the pack sleeping around him. 

_Not when he’s living a nightmare._

“That old woman is going to come to try to get you to dismiss my policy. You _have_ to make sure you don’t.” Her knuckles tightened around her folders. “You _can’t,_ okay?”

How many people they could save a fate like his father, she had told him previously. 

If such a policy had been run rigorously during his father’s time, maybe his father might still be alive. 

“I’ll do my best,” he creased an eye at her. 

He could only do his best for her because he hadn’t been good enough. 

_Kakashi will never be good enough._

“And the children’s hospital. Don’t forget the children’s hospital,” she reminds him.

“I won’t.”

He will never forget it how her voice rose and dipped in the night, lulling him to sleep on her plans for the hospital, how many children could have been saved if they had one specialising it and that for all Konoha talked about the will of fire, it never seemed to care for the healthcare of their people.

It was Sakura’s way of anchoring herself, a way of telling herself that there was going to be more than the war and the killing. Especially in the last year where the fighting had turned from bloody to downright brutal. 

“I promise to talk to Shizune about finding a good plot for it,” he says. Shizune would know what to find and if there isn’t a perfect one, he could always get Yamato to make one. His mokuten had improved after spending the war years with Shodaime.

“Didn’t Sasuke donate the rest of the Uchiha land to Konoha?” Sakura cocks her head, thinking. “Oh but it’s so far out. It’d be troublesome to bring a sick or injured kid there. We should put it in the middle of Konoha...” 

Kakashi watches her gesticulate as she spoke. Sakura had kept her hair short. Shampoo had been in short supply near the end of the war, so Sakura shorn off most of her hair. 

Back to basics she said then. 

He missed tangling his hands in her hair as he kissed her breathless, missed laying on her chest, hearing her heart beat.

Any time now, Kakashi is ready to wake up from this horrible nightmare.

He missed the way the sunset filtered through her hair, turning it to almost luminous red. 

“Stop daydreaming, Kakashi.” Sakura pokes him on his head. “Come on, it’s almost dinner now. What do you want for dinner?”

He blinks at her, dazed and she puffs her cheeks up, looking almost disappointed at him. “Don’t tell me you’re not hungry again.”

Kakashi slumps in his seat. If he skipped another meal, Sakura would be angry. Angry Sakura would led up Naruto disturbing him. “Fine… only if it’s mackerel.” 

She sighs. “You and your mackerel. Don’t you ever get sick of it?” 

“But Sakura-channnn… it’s comfort food.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Well I’m getting pretty sick of it. So _only_ if you get anmitsu on your way home.”

He smiles and she slaps her forehead. “Shit! Totally forgot I need to see Sai.” Sliding the window open, she hops out onto the ledge. “I’ll see you at dinner! Don’t forget the anmitsu!”

“I won’t,” he murmurs as the door swings open with Shikamaru looking frustrated. “Shikamaru, I was just about to leave.”

Shikamaru mutters unflattering words under his breath. “And I would have agreed with that seeing you’ve been staying overnight the last few days, but the… _Elders_ are very insistent on seeing you… about Sakura’s policies.”

“Shodaime’s saggy balls.”

✥.✥.✥

It’s late evening by the time he dismisses the Elders. It’s probably time for them to retire, he thinks. The world changes and they must change with it. It’s clear that the Elders aren’t ready to change yet. At their age, he doubts they’d ever change. Tsunade and Chouza would be good replacements. 

“Hey Kaka-sensei!” Naruto waves at him from down the shops and bounded over to him like an over eager puppy. Behind him, Kakashi could see Hinata catching up at her own sedate pace. “Oh good! You got dinner! I was just about to check in and see if you had dinner.”

Hinata finally catches up, hooking her fingers onto Naruto’s arm. Naruto looks down, startled and a flicker of realization and guilt colours his face. 

“Yamato-taichou just reminded me that we have a team seven meeting coming up. You know.”

Kakashi remembered that and nods. With Sakura’s schedule now, she would yet again miss the meeting.

“Shikamaru already cleared my schedule for that.”

“Well, Hinata and I are on a date,” he says as though Kakashi couldn’t tell from the fact that Naruto is wearing clean, pressed and well-fitted clothes that aren’t orange. “We’re going to somewhere that doesn’t serve ramen.”

Somewhere a bit more expensive, judging based on his clothes.

Hinata ducks her head with a shy smile. 

“Naruto-kun is bringing me to Hiroto.”

“Expensive,” Kakashi says.

“Yes. It’s… the sort of place that Sakura-chan always wanted her boyfriend to bring her to, ya know?”

Maybe the younger her, Kakashi muses. During the war, all Sakura-chan wanted was anmitsu and red bean dumplings. It was the war, he supposes. War always had a way of burning everything else but survival out. 

“Are you on your way back now, Kaka-sensei?”

Kakashi nods, once again regretting that he’s the Hokage now. Oh what he would do just to stick his face in Icha Icha and let people avoid him. Pity normal books didn’t have the Icha Icha effect.

“Just about to get some anmitsu for Sakura-chan,” he says.

Naruto’s jaws tighten, and he opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. There is a war of emotions in his blue eyes, emotions that Kakashi chooses not to figure out.

“Kaka-sensei…” Naruto says hoarsely like he had to strain to get his voice to work. “Tell… Sakura-chan that I’m okay, _okay_?”

“I will.” Kakashi ruffles his hair. 

“Make sure to eat your dinner,” Naruto reminds him again, letting Hinata tug him down the street. “I’ll check! I’ll send Gama to check!”

“Of course.” He creases an eye at Naruto and watches until they turn around the corner and disappear. 

Sakura would be pleased that Naruto is giving Hinata a chance. She had always told him about how if Naruto opened his eyes and looked, he would find happiness right next to him.

_It’s really just him now._

“Sakura-chan?” Kakashi calls out as he returns home, dropping the boxes of takeout on the counter. “Not back I guess.”

He tugs his mask down and flops onto his well-worn couch, staring up at the camellia in its pot on the wall and remembers how they used to cuddle in the tents. There had been so little sleeping bags, that often people made do to either rotating with another person or sharing it. Sakura and he had shared theirs. Kakashi remembers how she would lean into him, to press her soft lips across his face.


	3. Shattered

Suggested Soundtrack: 

It’s just a day before the first anniversary for the end of the war when Sasuke returns. The streets are draped in white, bouquets of white and yellow chrysanthemums have replaced the colourful flower decorations. 

Kakashi can barely stand seeing the village in mourning. He remembers the lines and lines of coffins all draped in the white flags with clan mons on it, his shoulders stiff from watching over the funeral pyres. 

“So, you’re back,” he says to Sasuke.

Dark circles rim Sasuke’s eyes. He never found peace in Konoha, he would never find peace outside of Konoha either, Kakashi thinks. Sasuke is a boy who grew up thrust into problems that shouldn’t have been his at his age, trying to fix things by himself that weren’t supposed to be his to fix when he should have been guided through life with a hand to hold for most of the way. 

Kakashi had been like him, but Sasuke didn’t have the mentor Kakashi did. Minato-sensei’s shoes were far too big for Kakashi to ever hope to fix.

“Of course,” Sasuke says flatly despite his body language saying that he would rather be anywhere else but in Konoha. “It’s tomorrow, isn’t it?” 

They look out over the village, the colourful nobori replaced with white cloths, the banners, the tables, the signs — all white now. Almost like snow, if it weren’t for the fact that it was an unseasonably warm autumn day.

“I could never miss it,” Sasuke whispers into the silence. 

“No.” Kakashi threads his fingers together, hands tightening so tight that his knuckles turn white. 

Sasuke stands there silently, hands fisting the hilt of his sword. “Did—” he falters. The boy had never been good at asking the questions that matter. That was how he lost Sakura. 

“How is the Children’s hospital?” Sasuke says instead. 

“You never cared about Sakura before, why start now?”

Kakashi couldn’t help but feel the strand of resentfulness against Sasuke. Things would have gone very differently if Sasuke had cared for Sakura from the beginning.

“...I owe her a life debt… It’s the least I can do.”

“It’s been built as per Sakura’s instructions.”

Sasuke’s lips tighten, a faint semblance of smile inching on his face before his customary solemn look replaces it. 

“The land you donated was too far out, so we replaced businesses, built one in the middle of the village, built another one near the newly built residences in the old Uchiha District.”

“Can hardly call Konoha a village anymore,” Sasuke says.

“No,” Kakashi hums pensively. “Although I’m not sure how people and the Daimyo would take us renaming Konohagakure no Sato to Konohagakure no Shi.”

They stare at each other for a minute and Kakashi bursts out laughing and Sasuke who was obviously trying not to laugh. 

“Somehow it makes me think of hidden children born of affairs,” Kakashi eventually manages to say after a minute of solid laughing.

“Sounds like something Sakura would say.” Sasuke averts his eyes back to the floor.

“She wouldn’t be too far off. After all Konoha hadn’t exactly started out as an approved thing in the beginning.”

“No. She wouldn’t,” Sasuke agrees. “What’s… the children’s hospital called?”

Kakashi looks out at the children’s hospital, currently the largest and newest building since the war. Though it wouldn’t be soon, from the looks of the other building sprouting out around it. 

“The Sakura’s foundation.”

Sasuke nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow for the meeting then. I’m going to visit Sakura.” Without waiting for a dismissal, Sasuke spins on the ball of his foot and stalks out of the office.

_Guess Sakura is going to be busy tonight._

Kakashi stands and stares out of the window, watching the streets of people that greet him when he walks past them. All the people that he now makes an effort to remember and none of them that knows him personally.

The weight of the hat is heavier than one can ever imagine. 

_Just like the weight of being alive._

He struggles for a breath then forces himself to breath slowly. 

The door swings open and Shikamaru saunters in, taking a stack of files from Kakashi’s table. “Go home, Hokage-sama. You look like shit. Don’t forget you’re off tomorrow.” 

“I guess I have no choice.”

He forces himself to nod at every person who greets him, forces himself to walk no faster than his usual strolling. 

“I’m home,” Kakashi calls out as he bypasses the traps and tugs his sandals off.

Sakura turns from the sink, the smile on her face so incandescent that he can’t help but smile back.

“You’re home and just in time for dinner.” She motions to the boxes of takeout on the box and Kakashi sighs.

“The good old takeout again. Can never miss that.”

“Well, if you miss _real_ food, then you can make it yourself. Especially since I’m busy running the Children’s hospital.” 

Kakashi just smiles at her from across the table.

✥.✥.✥

He dreams of her lips on his, his hands on her hips. Her quiet moans in his ear as he thrusts into her. Sakura would always bite his shoulder to stifle her noises, Kakashi never thought anyone would care. She was eighteen, an adult both as a civilian and shinobi and in war no one cared who was fucking who. Kakashi always wondered if she calls Sasuke out in her head as she orgasms. He never asks, he doesn’t want to know.

She had picked him. Today, tomorrow, yesterday, a month ago. Kakashi would take whatever she would give. 

The silhouette of her body in the moonlight, the valleys of her breasts delineated by the glow of the light seal. The way his hands on feels on her hips.

Kakashi reaches out and wakes. Moonlight is spilling across his bed but it’s cold and empty.

“Sakura, where did you go?” he whispers even though he already knows the answer. She must have gone to work on a night shift. Sakura liked doing that even way especially during the war. 

_“The high-risk patients always tend to die during three to four in the morning.”_

She would work in keeping them alive all through to dawn as she prays a fervent mantra under her breath. 

It all had been only a year ago.

Kakashi clutches at his chest, feeling the throb. Maybe he should ask Sakura to check it out. 

✥.✥.✥

Kakashi is oddly punctual when he turned up for the Team Seven meeting. It’s at their old training ground, right next to the memorial. The Fourth Shinobi War memorial is far larger than the Third and Second combined. 

And just like him, everyone in their team is dressed in black although no one in their team died. 

He turns to look at the memorial - the memorial he had stopped visiting after war. The names all carefully chipped into the white marble.

Sasuke carefully lays down a large bouquet of chrysanthemum flowers. 

_Why?_

Naruto steps forward, fingers caressing a name on it. 

The carved name reads ‘Haruno Sakura’. That can’t be right.

_Kakashi is running towards Sasuke, he barely has enough chakra left for a shunshin let alone another kamui. Kaguya is going to kill him._

That can’t be right, because he just ate dinner with Sakura last night and the night before. This had to be some kind of sick joke.

“It’s been a year since she died, and it still hurts so bad,” Naruto says. He doesn’t bother wiping the free flowing tears from his face. Even Sasuke has tears on his face. “Sakura-chan… I came to report… that I asked Hinata out like you told me to in our last conversation… You were right. She’s… perfect.”

_He’s going to lose a teammate. He forces himself to move faster._

_“Sasuke-kun!”_

Sasuke bows deeply at the stone and holds it even as his shoulders shake. “It’s a debt I can never pay but I can only try.”

_Sakura dashes forward, pushing Sasuke out of the way towards Kakashi. She smiles at him, a wobbly smile like she knows she’s going to do something utterly stupid but do it anyway._

“I have followed Tsunade-shishou around… learning her medical skills… hoping that… I could continue her… _your_ legacy.”

_“Sakura!”_

_Kaguya’s attack connects and her body is sent flying. Kakashi can hear the sound of her bones breaking even through the sound of the blood flooding his ears._

Sasuke stands and bows at Kakashi too. “I’m sorry.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Sasuke left not just because Tsunade left, not because there was no one else aside from Naruto for him in Konoha but because Sasuke thinks that he blames him for her death.

If it weren’t for Sasuke, Sakura wouldn’t be dead. She’d be alive with him now, doing all the things that they said they would after the war - the yard that she wanted, the hospital that she wanted, the health policies that she hoped to implement. 

Things that she can never see come to life now. 

Or even his dreams of seeing her wearing the wedding kimono with the Hatake mon on the back.

His throat closes up and he does the one thing he always does in situations he can’t handle, Kakashi flees.

The apartment is dark when he flickers into the genkan. There is no takeout, no smell of food, no Sakura. Just a cold, dark empty apartment with a wall full of plants.

“Sakura?” Kakashi calls out, his footsteps echoing heavily in the apartment as he opens all the doors, hoping that it’s a lie, that it’s a horrible nightmare. “Sakura!” he sinks onto the dining chair, leaning against his hands.

_“Kakashi.”_

He looks up and Sakura is sitting at the dining table opposite him.

“Kakashi?” she calls out to him puzzled. 

Her pink eyelashes are a splash of colour against her pale skin, her green eyes are almost electrifying. She’s the prettiest shinobi he’s ever met and Kakashi doesn’t mean her looks. She’s the kindest, warmest and most generous person he’s ever known.

“I need to let you go.”

Sakura smiles at him. 

“I _need_ to let you go…” Because Sakura wouldn’t want him to live a life like this. She would give him the look of disappointment. Kakashi can’t imagine disappointing her even after she’s gone. 

“That’s good,” she says. Her fingers brushes against his and an icy scraping chill crawls up his spine. 

“I can’t—” Kakashi sobs. 

“You’ll be okay. You have Naruto, and Yamato, and Genma, and Raidou, and Shizune, and—”

“But it’s not going to be you!” He slams the table hard with his palm. Kakashi looks up, trying not to let the heat in his eyes fall.

“You’ll be okay,” she repeats, giving him that wibbly-wobbly smile. “Because you’re Hatake Kakashi…” Sakura leans over him, kissing on his cheek. His vision is fogging up from the hot tears.

_“And I will always love you.”_

He scrubs his eyes away with his palm and she’s gone. All that’s left is her dented hitai-ate in front of him, where he had left it this morning and carried around Konoha with him faithfully every day. 

“Sakura! _Sakura!”_

_Don’t leave me too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers, 
> 
> I love your comments. I'm slightly disappointed everyone guessed it already, I had planned for it to be more subtle. Unfortunately, the subtly was tripping me up and adding far too much headache. I hope everyone enjoyed it anyway, while clutching our tissue boxes. I cried at the end while writing. For various reasons, I liked the idea of Sakura being a ghost that followed him around until he finally released her at the end. Either way you like to imagine it is fine. Whether she's never been there, whether she had always been there. It's an open-ended ending for your interpretation. 
> 
> Sasuke went on to become a medic-nin to honor the sacrifice Sakura made for him.  
> Naruto married Hinata.
> 
> This story was conceived under the pretext that Sakura didn't have any impact at the end/beginning of Boruto and what if Sakura was never there. A perfect excuse as to why Sasuke never stayed, why Naruto suddenly had a relationship with Hinata, etc, etc. 
> 
> I didn't want you readers to wait too long for the finale, so I rapid typed this. If you're following any of my other stories, please be aware I'm on a hiatus _again_ sigh. Health reasons, as always. 
> 
> And now after all the crying, feel free to read something sweet and funny.  
> [Kakasaku sweet and funny drabble](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17018772/chapters/40010622)  
> [Magical Team 7 drabble](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17930222)


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